Place and Space
by Maria Zalewska We began this semester by thinking of space as a dense object that gets produced. Two of the preliminary questions we asked were: How does one operationalize spaces that are always already produced and productive? How does space function heuristically and what do we learn about ourselves based on our relation to spaces and places? The purpose of this short wiki entry is to summarize the main questions and answers, themes, and ideas covered by us throughout this semester. As an attempt to systematize the distinction between place and space, one can begin to list some of the most general differences: * PLACE ** more specific; particular ** local/identity ** it’s produced (not neutral) ** it’s necessary as a precondition of human identity ** it oscillated between different temporalities (the idea of ‘place’ brings ‘time’ back) * SPACE ** multidisciplinary ** more abstract; theoretical ** it’s a social product, or a complex social construction ** it allows one to access the duality of cinema Space/Place/Power Edward Soja’s polemic against the long-standing distinction between history and geography critically asserts history as a temporal and spatialized discipline. In that context, cinema gives us the experience of simultaneity (space and time) that Soja evokes in his writings. Here, I want to quote Anirban’s post on Soja: “Space in this analysis is dynamic, changeable and produced by those who inhabit it while place denotes a certain sense of fixity in time”. Foucault (in “Of Other Spaces”) discusses the notion of heterotopia. In his understanding, space is always heterogenous, for it consists of a set of relations (and not just one thing). Space and geographies matter to him only as far as it relates to power and knowledge. * Spaces are relational * Film is a heterotopic space * we live in the “epoch of the simultaneity and juxtaposition” In his discussion of Buster Keaton’s comedies, Charles Wolfe (“From Venice to the Valley: California Slapstick and the Keaton Comedy Short”) offers a trifold breakdown of cinematic, spatial, and simultaneous layers: * location/reality/place (particularly, historically situated site) * constructed space of the story world (this can be doubly layered if it’s connected to a historical reality) * cinematic field (our contact with this field is mediated through camera) John David Rhodes and Elena Gorfinkel (“Taking Place: Location and the Moving Image, ‘Introduction’”) argue that “our experience of the moving image is intimately connected to our experience of place”. They take Edward S. Casey’s argument on the centrality of place to the constitution of subjectivity and they want to apply it idea to the study of moving images: “...place or location of the moving image is, like the place of human subjectivity, ‘at one with action and thought.’” * Place (as a precondition of human subjectivity) is not only ** a constitutive force ** but also a CONSTRUCTIVE force * “Identity is constructed in and through place, whether by our embrace of a place, our inhabitation of a particular point in space, or by our rejection of and departure from a given place and our movement toward, adoption and inhabitation of, another”. Mappings of Space and Place Henri Lefebvre argues that space is a social product/construction and that its transparency is an illusion; space is an actuality. One should recognize the complex and political processes of its production (space reflects the power relations embedded in every society). Pointedly, he distrusts the visual and visible in the study of space (this problematizes his argument’s applicability to the study of place and space in cinema). Therefore, cinema falls under ‘representational space’ and images belong to the incriminated medium. According to Lefebvre, our bodies (culturally constituted entities) navigate: * spatial practice (perceived) * representation of space (conceived) * representational space (aesthetic and symbolic) Lastly, he argues that social relations are spatial relations and that spatial control is social control. David Harvey lays out a trajectory of spatial theories and argues that capitalism has turned history into a geographical effort. What follows is that capitalism solves its crises by moving things around (geographical fixes). Doreen Massey, on the other hand, argues that places are not static and - just like capital- they are processes too. She states that “places do not have to have boundaries in the sense of divisions which frame simple enclosures” and that they “do not have single, unique ‘identities; they are full of internal conflicts”. She adds that “the specificity of place is continually reproduced, but it is not a specificity which results from some long, internalised history. (...) It is a sense of place, an understanding of ‘its character’, which can only be constructed by linking that place to places beyond. A progressive sense of place would recognise that, without being threatened by it”. Works cited: Foucault, Michel. “Of Other Places.” Trans. Jay Miskowiec. Diacritics 16.1 (1986). Gorfinkel, Elena and John David Rhodes. “Introduction: The Matter of Places.” Taking Place: Location and the Moving Image. Minneapolis: U Minnesota P, 2011. Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space. Trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith. Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 1991. Massey, Doreen. “A Global Sense of Place.” Marxism Today June 1991. Wolfe, Charles. “From Venice to the Valley: California Slapstick and the Keaton Comedy Short”.